Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
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 www.ideavirus.com
Problem #5: The ideavirus isn’t a natural monopoly. In other words, once they do a great job
of spreading the virus, it’s not clear that enfish’s solution will be the only one to triumph.
One of the amazing things about ICQ, for example, is that the better they did, the better
they did. In other words, there were network effects that created a natural monopoly.
Unfortunately for enfish, there isn’t an obvious reason why an enfish knock-off couldn’t be
as good as enfish.
Solution: The same communication tools that made it go viral will also support its position
as a monopoly.
The good news is that once it catches on, enfish will be extraordinarily persistent. It will sit
on your desk for years, saving you time and making enfish a profit as they go.
The other good news is that because the benefit delivered by enfish is so awesome, once the
virus starts to spread through a hive, it ought to spread with high velocity, and with the
support of the very best kind of powerful sneezers. This is a product that can easily attract
the attention of sneezers on the left side of the chasm (the early adopters) but also offers very
real benefits that will make it fairly smooth to transfer to the right side of the chasm.
So what should enfish do?
My recommendation is that they focus on a single hive: people who trade stocks online.
Why?
Well, the hive is pretty easy to talk to. There are eight or so online brokerage companies who
could all benefit by sneezing about enfish to their best customers. And online traders talk to
each other constantly, meaning that the message can spread through this community with
enormous velocity.
Further, the benefit to online traders is much, much easier to describe, so it’s a lot smoother:
Make more money by trading in a more organized way.

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